Black Box Trio in the WSC planetarium

Kadra Sommersted, Staff Writer

The Black Box Trio performed in the Wayne State College Planetarium last Thursday and Friday.

Forty to 50 people attended the first performance, Thursday. The music was accompanied by a projection of scenery on the ceiling, created by Todd Young, professor of physics and astronomy and the director of the Fred G. Dale Planetarium.

“This is about the fourth time that we’ve done this,” said Young.

Young said that every year he goes to a planetarium conference, while there, he converses with others on how they use their planetariums.

“One of them said that they have a very popular live music event,” Young said. “So when I heard that, I approached Dr. Karl Kolbeck, associate music professor, to see if he was interested in doing something similar. It kind of just took off from there.”

Young said the first music performance at the school had all kinds of people and instruments. After having so many people part of the original band and the audience, it was too much. Since then it has been reduced to just the Trio.

The Black Box Trio consists of Kolbeck, who plays the clarinet, Kathi Angeroth who plays the violin, and Shelly Armstrong who accompanies on the piano.

“These live music events (with the Black Box Trio) are very popular, so I would recommend getting there early to get a seat,” said Young.

Young said that these events are so popular, the Black Box Trio are now doing them every semester.

“Their musical talents were really shown through,” said Allison Ludwig, a major in radiography and currently enrolled in a symphonic band class. “You could definitely tell how much they care for music.”

Ludwig said that their tone quality, with everything else, was incredible.

“I thought that it was all really interesting,” said Ludwig. “I had never been in the planetarium before, so seeing how the whole thing worked was pretty interesting.”

She said that the instruments in the trio were a different pairing of instruments.

“Usually when you think about trios, you think about instruments like brass, woodwind or percussion instruments,” said Ludwig. “But this was a mixture of all three.”

She said that she would surely go to another event like this, and she enjoyed the half-hour show.

“Their harmonizing was really good,” said Ludwig. “Their note and tone quality was really good as well.”